Jesse Crockett
Independence Day
Jarring to the shoulders the dusty impact
jumping down from the truss, scent of creosote.
A log bars the stream, pooling in eddy
to one, from the other side
streaming moss.
Lime glitter speckles the banks, early elm samaras.
A heartish leaf glances the surface, its shadow hurried
to hold pace into a slight recess, appears to lose
time, gain distance.
Away, on the log bridge,
beside you, ants.
A minnow wends downstream and vanishes into the moss,
the moment one feels the samaras, then in dancing
filaments the minnow reappears, disappears upstream.
The wind resolves the paradox of the ashen leaf,
the water that of the minnow, the light of the water.
Extending from the log bridge, beside you,
a limb from which another that snaps free,
before into greater iridescence downstream
a starburst slows the eye.
Guarded, this aurora holds the eye until the current
tires the hand, tosses the stick.
Reaching nearly back to the road the log bridge, fallen from a living elm,
looking up into which, life,
from looking on the light, appears faded.
A bird glides beyond the tree, over the glen of vines lacing skeletal limbs.
You stand from the log bridge, cross the slow declivity of poplar marsh,
under the bridge.
Deer, raccoon prints in the mud.
In the stream, in the far of the shade of the bridge,
gentle rapids allow your light a gathering of its ashes,
your breath.
